Troubled Qantas says ‘sorry’ with ticket spree

SYDNEY – Embattled Australian carrier Qantas said Sunday it would splurge Aus$20 ($20.7) million on 100,000 free air tickets in a bid to win back passengers after the shock two-day grounding of its global fleet.

Some 70,000 travellers were stranded in 22 cities across the world when Qantas CEO Alan Joyce grounded the airline last Saturday to force an end to months of strike action by pilots, engineers and ground staff.

The gamble paid off for Joyce, with Canberra stepping in to prevent huge damage to the Australian economy by forcing an end to all industrial action at the airline, but furious passengers have vowed never to fly Qantas again.

Its woes deepened on Friday when an engine problem saw a Qantas A380 diverted to Dubai, in an unwelcome reminder of the engine explosion which temporarily grounded its entire superjumbo fleet exactly one year ago.

Joyce kicked off a huge public relations offensive Sunday with the offer of a free return flight within Australia or between Australia and New Zealand for every customer stranded by last weekend’s chaos.

“Now that no more industrial action can take place and the cloud of further strike action has lifted we are 100 percent focused on what matters to customers: getting them to their destinations safely, on time and in comfort, and rewarding their loyalty to Qantas,” Joyce said.

“This ticket offer is one of a range of initiatives we will be launching as a way of saying sorry as we move forward into this period of stability.”

Some 100,000 tickets have been slated for giveaway, at a cost of Aus$20 million, and the offer is open for two years from December 14, with full-page newspaper advertisements urging passengers to “fly with us, on us”.

Joyce said further announcements would soon be made about compensating frequent flyers and overseas-based customers.

Qantas has already promised to refund all “reasonable losses” for passengers affected by the drama.

“We deeply regret the inconvenience caused over recent months and last weekend in particular, however we are excited about the short and long-term future for Qantas,” he said.

The pilots’ union, which claims the airline is losing a “pilot a day” to rivals such as Emirates, said it would have been “a lot cheaper for them to work with their workforce”.

Joyce evoked national fury with his snap decision to shut down Qantas last weekend following several months of industrial action over the airline’s plans to restructure its international business in Asia.

Staff want guarantees on job security and wages and conditions which Qantas rejects as unreasonable, and the once state-owned airline has warned that its future is at stake amid frenzied competition in the region.

Irish-born Joyce, 45, worked at rival carrier Ansett when it went to the wall in 2001, costing 17,000 jobs, and he said the experience had scarred him – “there were suicides, that was horrendous.”

“There’s no guarantee of the right to exist. You have to fight for it and I think that’s what we’re doing,” he told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

He’s been rounded on by politicians and the public alike, with the media dubbing him the nation’s most loathed man, but Joyce said he was sick of what he described as “racist” slurs about his accent and heritage.

“I don’t think there’s any difference between attacking somebody because of their Irish accent and attacking someone because of their colour — they’re all forms of racism,” he said.

Joyce said Qantas understood that it had disrupted “a huge amount of customers and we are wanting to go above and beyond to say we are sorry.”

“We’re sorry for what happened and hope people will understand why we did it.”